My #1 tip for Thanksgiving
If you are able, take a walk. Take it earlier than you think you need it.
Earlier this year my mom recommended I download the Insight Timer app and sent me a couple of guided meditations that she had found helpful. One of them begins with a voice saying “Notice whether you can make yourself five to ten percent more comfortable.”
I think of this sometimes when I get in bed at night, tense with anticipation that the baby is going to wake up hungry as I finally succumb to sleep.
I thought of this as I looked at my grandmother on her hospital bed earlier this week. She looked at least 90% uncomfortable. I stroked her hand.
I noticed in the Washington Post book review the other day (because I read actual paper newspapers when I come home to Maryland) something about a novel whose protagonist concludes: Home is where it hurts.
Yesterday I did a lot of driving. First to the hospital on the third route the GPS had dictated in as many days. I made my way down Route 50 behind a big orange Bolt Bus arriving from New York — “my twenties!” I thought with nostalgia, as the result of my decidedly mid-thirties pregnancy babbled charmingly in the backseat — and then over on Bladensburg Road past the distilleries and freshly painted sub shop signs and other new-to-me signs of gentrification. We made our way to Constitution Avenue and drove past Senate office buildings and I thought how delighted my grandma had been earlier in the week when I showed her Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s Congress Camp Instagram story. “She is just amazing!” Grandma said to my dad and me, forgetting briefly about the tubes and X-rays.
We drove past the Capitol itself. “When Rosa Parks died,” I told the baby, who had begun to grumble, “I stood in line here. A very long line that wound all the way down this green. And when President Obama took his oath of office for the first time, I stood outside not too far from here. Those were the two times my body has probably been the coldest it’s ever been in my whole life.”
We made our way past the history museums (whose history, we ask, as we contemplate Thanksgiving and #Thankstaking) and she began to fuss harder. I focused on the beautiful November light, and I tried singing Move and Groove and parroting the noises she made and reciting her favorite books from memory, and soon we turned on 23rd and I began to look for parking.
After our visit I buckled her in again and we drove back to my parents’ house to pack (me) and nap (her). Then I repeated the carseat-loading process, putting toys within arms’ reach knowing she’d throw them all, Velcro-ing her little fleece booties on over her socks knowing she’d pull both off and gnaw on her toes before we made it to the airport to pick up her papa. We spent almost two hours driving those 13 miles. I recited all of the books again. She was crying hard by the end. Having forgotten to refill my water bottle, I had inhaled the small handful of grapes I’d intended to give him as welcome snack.
Finally, finally, we were just 20 minutes away from our final destination of his parents’ house Silver Spring, and he was staving off squalls by slowly offering her tiny pieces of broccoli and blueberries I’d packed in tiny Tupperware, when I told him: “I realize this is not ideal but I have to stop and find a bathroom. I’ll be quick.”
I kid you not, if I hadn’t seen this cheesy illustration the day before and thought about how I like this “fill your cup” metaphor much better than the “put on your own oxygen mask before assisting others” one, I’m not sure I would have listened to my body and pulled over at that Starbucks. But I did it. And the whole night was better as a result.
And so was today’s drive (solo this time! to see my grandma who is out of the hospital!), which involved two whole water bottles just for me, zero children’s book recitations, and a bathroom break at that exact same Starbucks.
‘Tis the Season for Grieving, writes Heidi Maria Lopez, one of the strongest community organizers I know:
To me this time of year is marked by very crucial holy-days. Days where each day the darkness increases until the winter solstice when that begins to turn around. Don’t let these systems fool you into thinking that we must generate “lightness” to get by.
If you’re on the road this week, here’s hoping you breathe deep and keep your water bottles (and tanks) filled. If you’re grieving, double ditto.
Here’s to getting at least five or ten percent more comfortable before you fill others’ cups.
Empty cup drawing via @SubwayTherapy on Instagram. All other images this week are my own photos from Thanksgivings 2007 and 2009 at my grandparents’ old house.
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